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Only one in four Drug Treatment and Testing Orders are successfully completed by substance misusing offenders, according to a report by parliament’s public accounts committee, writes Craig Kenny.

Just 28% of 5,700 DTTOs that were terminated in 2003 had reached full term or been revoked early because the offender had made good progress, the report says.

However, this may be an overestimate, since there was evidence from Leicestershire and London that these figures included a large proportion of offenders whose orders technically expired although they had been breached.

In 44 per cent of cases offenders breached their orders and had them terminated, while for another 22 per cent the order was stopped due to a conviction for another offence.

There was a wide variation between areas in the proportion of offenders who completed their orders – from eight per cent in Kent to 71 per cent in Dorset. However, the report notes that DTTOs in Dorset ran for the minimum period of six months, whereas in most areas they ran for at least a year.

Offenders who completed the full DTTO were much less likely to re-offend – the reconviction rate was 53 per cent for those who completed their orders, compared with 91 per cent for those who did not.